Fear, Guns and Kids

When I brought my son back to school on Monday after the winter break, we got an unpleasant surprise: two armed cops standing at the front gate. The first thought that went through my mind? Wayne LaPierre has won. A week after the Newtown shootings, LaPierre, head of the National Rifle Association (NRA), had called for gun-toting security guards to be placed at every school in country. And here I was bringing my five-year-old son to kindergarten, walking past two police officers loaded and ready to shoot.
When I went to the PTA meeting later that morning, I learned that this was only the beginning of changes coming to his school. Starting today, parents have to drop off their kids at the front gate in the morning and aren’t allowed on campus without stopping at the principal’s office for a special pass. And in the afternoon, parents must pick up their kids at the front gate and won’t be allowed to stay on campus after 2:30 pm.

The worst part about all this isn’t the financial waste (though I’m sure those nice police officers could be put to better use somewhere else). It’s the way it creates a climate of fear in LA schools. Instead of being welcomed to participate in their childrens’ education, parents are being treated like intruders and potential criminals. This is terrible, especially since study after study has shown that parental involvement strongly impacts student achievement.

What’s really depressing is that most of the parents I’ve talked to are completely on board with the increased security. In fact, they want more to be done. One parent wants my son’s school to invest in fence coverings so no one can look at the children when they’re playing. So what’s next? Putting chadors on our kids so they can’t be seen walking down the street?

This is not what I want for my son. One of the reasons I live in downtown Los Angeles is because I don’t want him to see life solely through a car window or to encounter other human beings only at the mall. I want him to be exposed to the diversity of life–cultural, racial, and economic. It’s true that living near skid row means we sometimes see sad, unpleasant, and depressing things. But my son also has the joy of saying hi to the shopkeepers who know him, petting neighbors’ dogs, riding his Spiderman bicycle in Ciclavia and walking to the Central Library. I do the best I can to keep him safe, but I also have to accept that I can’t protect him from every possible risk. To try to do so will impoverish his life.

Alisa is a writer whose work has been featured in the Oregonian, the Syracuse Post-Standard, Latina magazine and other publications. She has also had her short fiction published in the Berkely Fiction Review and Iris: A Journal About Women. Alisa and her husband, James Hightower, have been happily raising their son, Nathan, in downtown Los Angeles since 2008. You can learn more about Alisa's work at www.alisarivera.com.

Lisa Ragsdale

could not agree more. and where will this end? Are we going to hire armed guards at the ymca daycare, sunday school, public parks, library story hours? Anywhere there are groups of children? and since I’m guessing this will all be paid for by taxpayers ( many of whom don’t want to fund education and pay “exorbitant” wages to the teachers who educate their kids) these guards will be underpaid and we will have poorer quality of teachers AND security. That all of this seems like a better solution to some people than making automatic weapons illegal to purchase is just mind-boggling to me.

DTLAFamilies

Lisa, you make a great point about people not willing to fund education but who want to throw huge amounts of money on cops and jails. I don’t get it.

Jason Li

According to statistics, the biggest cause of children deaths is car accidents, which in in the thousands per year. If we simply reduce the time our kids have to ride in the car, that will do significantly more than all the security and officers at the school.

Daycare+Schools

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